This invention relates to packaging and carriers for coded cards, such as phone cards, bank cards, credit cards, debit cards and other merchant-specific cards.
Coded cards are well-known and widely used for a variety of purposes, examples being credit cards, debit cards, rental cards, bank cards and the like. In more a recent application of coded cards, such cards are used to secure or extend credit for prepaid products or services. Examples of this are phone cards. The phone card carries a pre-paid amount of credit which the card user, typically the bearer, exhausts as the card user makes telephone calls using the phone card.
Pre-paid gift cards have exploded in popularity and carry with them an amount of pre-paid credit for which the donor has typically paid. Such gift cards represent a cash equivalent when the pre-paid gift card is presented by the donor to a donee.
Whatever the type of pre-paid coded card, to reduce the risk of theft, such cards sold in a retail environment are stored or displayed with the cards being inactive. These so-called “pre-paid” cards require activation before the card may be used. Desirably, card activation is performed at the time the card is purchased. Activation is typically performed by machine-reading a unique identification number encoded on the card, with the machine-reading being performed at the point-of-sale of the coded card. Typically a unique identification number for the card is stored on a magnetic strip or as part of a bar code which is printed on or otherwise permanently attached to the rear of the card.
The card identification number is read by the card reader machine as the portion of the card where the magnetic strip or bar code is located is brought into proximity with the card reader. This is typically done by passing the card portion on which the magnetic strip or bar code is located along a reading head of a card reader machine which magnetically or optically senses the unique identification number encoded in the magnetic strip or bar code associated with that card. During the card activation process the card usually, but not always, remains attached to a cardboard carrier via which the card is displayed in the retail environment. The card reader machine transmits the unique identification number which has been read for the particular card to a central computer, which typically is remotely located relative to the point-of-sale locale of the card. The computer “activates” the card by accessing account information corresponding to the card number, which account information is stored within the central computer, and “opening” the account for that particular card. Once the card has been “activated” in this manner, the bearer of the card can purchase goods or services, using the card as cash, in an amount equal to the value which has been assigned to the account associated with the card. Whenever the card is used, the central computer debits the account corresponding to the card until the value of the account for the card is zero. At that point the account is closed or otherwise inactivated and the card can no longer be used.